Pages

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Do You Have the Moxie to Self-Publish?

My friend, the author Diana Nixon, is blog-touring for the month of February and I was one of the lucky blog sites she has chosen to visit. Today, she is talking about the guts and glory of self-publishing, a topic that is near and dear to my indie heart. Please enjoy her thoughts....I sure did.

Day 3.

Hard work of self-publishing

by Diana Nixon

First of all, I
should say that self-publishing isn’t easy. Unlike traditionally published
authors, we have to solve all the problems we face on our own. We don’t have
agents (though I know that some self-published authors do have them), we need
to find editors, cover designers, choose which publisher is better, find the
ways to promote our books and find financial support to spread them all over
the world.

The biggest problem
I faced while publishing my books was my residence. I live in Belarus and
publish my books via Createspace that’s a US company. It complicates matters
significantly. For example, when someone asks me to sing a book, he or she needs
to send me a copy (or I order it myself) and pay for shipping that not every
reader can afford. When I order books for signing, it costs less, because I’m
the author and I have a discount. The only thing that disappoints me about
Createspace is that they don’t give any free copies for the authors who use
their services. We have to pay even for the copies that are not approved yet! I
think at least one should have been free:)

Finding a good editor is the main thing
everyone should pay attention to. I had the imprudence to publish my first book
without proofreading it properly. Thank God, one of my first readers volunteered
to help me with the text to make it look better:) I’m not a native speaker,
though I write my books in English, I need an editor to edit them for me. I
found one on Goodreads that is a great forum for readers and writers. If you
need any advice or help with your work, you can always find it there.

I did the first
covers for my books myself. I still do them, but I’ve found a cover designer
who creates colorful covers for my books’ Gift editions that are signed
digitally and are created especially for those readers who would like to get
signed copies.

When the manuscript
is ready and proofread you need to promote your book. And here starts the most
interesting part:) Most new authors don’t know what to start with. I suggest starting
with creating an official page. Once I wrote a post about my experience in
self-publishing where I listed the methods of promotion I used myself.

I created my author pages everywhere I could:
on Goodreads, Shelfari, Facebook, Amazon, Lulu. I post about my every step in
getting my books ready to be published. I create events and invite my friend to
celebrate my new cover or book releases, and I’m sure that commutation is the
key to every self-published author’s success:) The more we spread news about
our books, the more readers we will find.

One of the biggest
advantages of using Createspace services it that now they sell books in the UK
and Europe. Kindle editions are also available in Canada, Brazil, India and
Japan. If you know people who can translate your books, or if you can do it
yourself, you will find audience everywhere!

I don’t know if I
would be able to work with a publishing house, because despite all the
difficulties we face self-publishing our books, we control the whole process of
publishing and it’s always hard to lose control over the situation and let
someone else decide what to do with your works:)

If you have any
questions, don’t hesitate to ask them. If I can help you with anything, I
always will:)

Thanks everyone for
following my Book tour and a special thanks to Samantha for hosting it!:)

No worries, Diana. I was so happy to have you on the bloggy. Be sure and check out Diana's hot new release, the Love Lines series and please stop by all the other blogs as well. It's a great tour!

2 comments:

Congratulations on making the journey to publication. I self-pubbed my fantasy, Covenant, and used Kindle Select for the ebook and Lightning Source for the paperback. I'm impressed with your blog tour - something I'm still working on!